MATS Autumn 2026
The Autumn 2026 program will run for 10 weeks in Berkeley, CA and London, UK from September 28th to December 4th. Fellows will receive mentorship from world-class researchers and at organizations like Anthropic, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Redwood Research, and ARC, with the option to apply for a 6–12 month funded extension beyond the main program. For the first time, we are running Founding & Field-Building and Biosecurity tracks.
Applications are now open. Apply by June 7th.
Program phases
Key dates for the application and admissions timeline
Applications typically open several months before the program begins. Applicants complete a multi-stage admissions process, beginning with a general application. Depending on the tracks, streams, and mentors they apply to, applicants may also complete additional evaluations such as interviews, work tests, coding assessments, or writing samples before final admissions decisions are made.
In stage one, applicants apply to one or more tracks (broad research areas): Empirical, Theory, Strategy & Forecasting, Policy & Governance, System Security, Biosecurity, and Founding & Field-Building. In stage two, advancing applicants choose specific streams within those tracks, each led by one or more mentors with their own research agenda. You can view this list as a grid here.
In this stream, I’m interested in developing concrete, actionable R&D agendas for post-AGI institutions and AI resilience. For post-AGI institutions, I’m especially interested in what infrastructure would be needed to make super-cooperative AGI or “Coasean bargaining at scale” possible. For AI resilience, I’m interested in follow-on work to airesilience.net that moves from high-level motivation to detailed proposals.
Computational/modelling problems in biosecurity.
Projects on this stream cluster into a few broad areas from the empirical track: scalable oversight, AI control, monitorability and interpretability, adversarial robustness, and security.
Most fellows will work closely with one or two mentors on something that fits into the mentors' ongoing research. The above list of mentors above is tentative.
This stream conducts policy and governance research on "loss-of-control" risks from advanced AI, such as recursive self-improvement and misalignment.
Peter Wildeford
I am hoping to get more help developing policy ideas for future policy windows.
The Redwood Research stream is looking for fast empirical iterators and strategists to work on control research.
Eleos AI Research is a nonprofit working to ensure the interests of AI systems are appropriately taken into account as we navigate transformative AI. We are looking for competent generalists to help scale up our AI welfare field-building by running high-impact events, or to otherwise amplify our research, communications, and operational capacity.
Backing projects focused on product development and organization building in the areas of AI safety and alignment, biosecurity, and critical cybersecurity. Looking for fellows who are self starters, default to action, and have a desire to create.
Community at MATS
MATS Research phase provides scholars with a community of peers.
Scholars work out of a shared office and are supported by the Community Team.
MATS alumni report that the connections with peers that they made during MATS have had the largest impact on them years later. Our full-time Community Team works to facilitate these connections and also provide general well-being support. Weekly lightning talks, scholar-led discussion groups, game nights, and outings to SF are some examples of MATS events.